Structural Patterns

The title isn’t entirely true, I did step into Carlos Rolon’s show at Paul Kasmin Gallery expecting to walk out quickly, but found myself drawn in by the diversity of wall pieces. Upon first look, the work all appeared slick and uniform – nice, colorful rectangles hanging beautifully on white walls. I can’t say that I really cared for any of the wall pieces, they are gaudy and not very interesting, but I’m glad that I walked through the space to find an installation with a television playing an interview with Manos de Piedra, Roberto Duran… a figure from my childhood. The hidden installation is much more interesting than any of the wall pieces as it does a nice job of capturing a specific time and culture that many Latinos from my age group can identify with. Rolon born in 1970 recreated his childhood wood-panel basement in the installation and featured excerpts from televised moments with the boxer Roberto Duran. Unfortunately, I didn’t document the installation.

At Andrea Rosen, you can find David Altmejd’s crazy, obsessive, sculptures that point to animation. I’ve seen several of these over the years and once you’ve seen one, there’s not much of a need to see another. They are intricate and obsessively done, but not very interesting. I was much more intrigued by the face sculpture below than the complex, multilayered room scale plexi and mixed media sculptures.

Jiha Moon’s work at Ryan Lee isn’t very interesting or worth a visit either, but I loved the graphic comic accents in the paintings and the combination of seemingly traditional ceramics with pop culture. On the surface, the work is whimsical and fun, but doesn’t do much more, beyond appearance.

Keith Sonnier’s work at Pace are engaging, but again they leave a bit of an empty feeling… more decorative than anything.

I don’t have anything to say about Andy Denzler paintings other than they made me long for Richter Gerhard… Though uninteresting, stylistically, I felt the need to take one photograph.

Ralf Schmerberg nice colorful prints of random things he encounters are kind of interesting. I like the title of the show “Greetings from our planet.”

Perhaps the high light of the stroll through Chelsea was the John Ahearn sculptures at Alexander and Bonin. But once again, I came away feeling a bit empty as I’ve experienced Ahearn’s work on the street where it belongs and it’s much more powerful than in a gallery.

Nearly every time, I do a Chelsea Gallery walk, I find something redeeming, worth seeing, but this February, I unfortunately did not come across anything interesting. And to top it off, the fashion people due to Fashion Week made the walk really annoying. And sadly, on the way to the subway, I came across this horrific scene where an MTA driver lost his life.